The Only Way

Whether you're in the mood for a Whopper Jr. with extra ketchup, or a coney dog without the dog, (like my mom), you can truly Have it Your Way.™ But it's not just fast food that ensures our satisfaction. Auto dealerships tell us to name our price. We can choose between white fillings or silver. Credit or Debit? Paper or Plastic? Even our beds can simultaneously have two different levels of firmness. Everywhere we go, the choice is ours for the making;

...Including the Church, it seems.

Shockingly, many pastors are retreating from the standard that names them Shepherd of the Church, and are falling into the trend that prevents them from "offending a brother." There are churches everywhere giving choices that are affecting the eternity of the saints. Congregations such as the United Church of Christ are encouraged to Have it Their Way, regardless of how it stands next to Scripture. Resembling a fast-food drive-thru, people walk under steeples and order their religion. "I'd like a Number 4 with extra grace, hold the "unto good works."

Churches are creating a custom-made generation, in fear they will hurt someone's feelings.

The Bible gives us choices, too.

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve." Joshua 24:15
"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both
thou and thy seed may live." Deuteronomy 30:19

From the very beginning of time God gave His children a choice! But they chose disobedience.

Like Adam and Eve, we too will reap the consequences of our decisions. We can have it our way on earth. But eternity may not be as generous toward us.

Just keep Swimming.

The worst critic we face in life is, undoubtedly, ourselves. Scornfully, we look down at our scale, wince at our GPA, and pinch our pale skin in effort to look a little rosier... only later to suck our lip in exasperation at the sight of our flushed cheeks from exerting ourselves too greatly. Does the cycle ever stop? Oh, it continues, of course, on a peddling course downhill until we crash diet, crash study...and ultimately, crash and burn.

One of our favorite places to examine and scrutinize our life is in the realm of our "yesterday." We are quite good at recapturing, minute by minute, the details of our past, conducting a list-full of "If only"s and "what if"s. We pick at our scabs from the falls life has dealt us, and we never allow the healing process to do its job. We do it all the time. "If only I would have never opened that extra line of credit..." "I should have just listened to my mother." "I wish I would have..." What if..."

I've heard it said a million times that "hind-sight is better than foresight." It wasn't until I was older that I realized it wasn't "Hines sight is better than four sight," which to my young mind had something to do with ketchup and four eyes." (Something I couldn't figure out for the life of me!)

Now that I am a little older, this saying holds far more meaning than it once held. "If only" I would have understood it better as a child! Maybe I would have chosen paths a little more wisely...

And here again goes the cycle...

It seems inevitable, what we do to ourselves; the constant nagging at our souls for the choices we've made. Recently, however, a child's movie has placed a thought in my heart, that will not soon be forsaken.

"Just keep swimming..." We need to just...keep...swimming...

Dory, a little, spunky, "natural blue" fish teaches a worrisome daddy a lesson in letting your child spread its wings, (or puff its gills) and swim away from the reef, in Disney's Finding Nemo. However, this is not the lesson I needed to learn. I am not a parent suffering from the empty-nest syndrome. Rather, I am the journeying daughter, wishing her story could be told a little differently than it has been written.

My lesson is one that teaches me to be like Dory.

Dory has short-term memory loss. She easily forgets the most common things...except this song:

"you know what you do when life gets you down?" She says. "You Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....just keep swimming, swimming swimming..."


Isn't that what God does? He forgets about our past, throwing it in a sea he never swims in...

Darlin, I believe it's about our turn to do the same. Forget about the "what if"s and start swimming in an ocean of God's grace.